The Conjurer's Trick
by the daroga
Summary: For the Persian, the siren's song reaches back all the way to the Rosy Hours of Mazenderan. Slash.


A/N: As I can find no support for the word "sultana" in this context, I am using the word Malakeh to denote the wife of the Shah, though I recognize the spurious academic credentials of Wikipedia. Thanks to tkp for her beta.

Rumor swirls around him, and everyone seeks his interest despite his near constant attempts to court death or disfavor. There is not enough of him to go around, and I fear that soon there will be nothing left. Nothing for me to preserve. To keep as my own. There is a line between us and the rest of the court, but I cannot be sure it is not my own imagination. I am not sure Erik recognizes such distinctions.

I knock, and I hear his voice call out my name—half-amused, half resigned.

"You should lock your doors, Erik," I say as I enter. "Not all visitors might be as benign as I."

"You are benign as a rat," he says casually. He is laid out on cushions, in his shirtsleeves despite the cold, belly-down and scribbling at some plans or music on the floor before him. He does not look up. "A necessary evil, but the lesser of them. Besides, had you been anyone else this might have made an appearance sooner."

He draws a slim throwing dagger from beneath a red tasseled pillow and throws it—again without looking—into the wall behind me, where it embeds itself with a slight quiver.

"How fortunate for me I am only a rat," I say dryly. I look around the room and find the same strange ascetic disarray which always confuses me. Not a trace ever betrays the fact that a man eats and sleeps and lives here, but projects are scattered without discernible organization. Even as I brought him here, I never saw him perform any of the functions men do--neither eat nor sleep nor relieve himself. He remained as apart from me as if his mask would reveal only gears behind it, with a key in his back to wind him up. But I have seen his face, in Russia, and while it is made of flesh, it is no more a man's face than a doll's is.

"Your staring is wearisome," he says, and I realize my eyes have lit on him again, and now he is looking back. "Were you sent to interrupt my work?"

"No."

"To ensure I was devising still more ingenious tortures, I expect," he says with a sneer in his voice. "A child could do what I do for her. A child," he continues, intently turning back to the pages before him, "could not write this symphony."

"I hope you will play it for me one day. When it is finished."

Erik laughs, something between indulgence and derision. "One does not play a symphony solo. It requires an orchestra. Something your country is sadly lacking."

"It's for future use then," I say, making conversation.

"Should I have one. And I am certain that whatever you came to tell me—forgive me, inform me—will be pivotal to that end. Out with it, daroga; Erik is busy."

"I am under no orders, Erik."

"Indeed? Is such a thing permitted? I thought you were bundled away into a closet when not in use."

"It sometimes feels that way, but I am a man."

"Are you?" He looks up at me again, a piercing yellow glance, and something in him seems to relent. "Very well. Have a date." He waves at an enameled dish. "A gift, from the Shining Greatness which is the Malekeh."

I take one. He does not. They are very good dates, and I take another. As if invited, and perhaps I am, I sit some feet away, on the piled twin of his own mound of cushions.

"You should not speak of her so," I say. "In such a tone, I mean. The walls have ears."

"I will speak as I please, and put any misunderstandings down to my unfamiliarity with your clumsy tongue."

I smile. "No one hearing you would believe such an excuse. And you really ought to be careful. You are favored now, but it does not make you immortal."

"Do you know what she asked me today?" I do not answer, and he rises fluidly—his skeletal body seems to be perversely jointed in more places than mine—to retrieve a bottle of something from a cabinet. I don't indulge, and so I do not know what it is he pours into a glass and tosses back, facing away from me so that he can lift the mask up enough to drink the forbidden spirits. "She asked me how I like the Shah's harem. How I _like_ it."

I sit on my cushions, watching his back as if there is something written in the line of it that he cannot cover with a mask. If there is, I cannot read it.

"How do you?"

He turns to me, his hands spread in elegant disbelief.

"What sort of question is that? She asks me such things as if to dangle scraps. Expecting me to snap at her one of these days, I suppose. But I am not a starving cur."

"You aren't?" I ask, unable to hide my surprise.

"I do not equate carnal desire with the body's need for sustenance, no," he says with asperity. "I am quite capable of behaving myself around females. If any of you had half a brain you might realize that I don't come from a cloistered nation where the merest sight of a bare ankle can turn a man into a raving fiend. There are things in life which are necessary, daroga, and things which are not." He takes another drink from his glass, turning away again. "Your wife is in Mazenderan still, is she not?"

I needn't struggle to find the thread in this line of questioning. "Yes, she is," I say.

"Despite your prolonged stay at court. Which, as I learned today, is not so much required of you as requested. Keeping an eye on the Shah's latest bauble, repulsive as he is, can be no substitute for the comforts of a wife. Whom, I suspect, could be easily sent for."

I look away, at the floor, and Erik's long legs slide into view as he settles again on his pillows. On his back, this time. "I have comfort enough. And as you say, there are necessary things and... not. What did you tell her?" I do not mean my wife.

"That she was wasting her time. That Erik has more pressing matters to occupy him than the contemplation of hundreds of cohabitating women. Which, quite frankly, seems excessive to the point of madness."

I agree, but I feel the absurd urge to press the matter. To arrive at the point the Malekeh clearly had not. To make him admit something, to expose just one of the springs that makes him so imperfectly mimic humanity.

"But there are advantages, surely, to being allowed inside," I say. "You are a man, Erik. A glimpse, here and there, must be pleasing to you. The allure of the forbidden."

"I may as well be a eunuch," he snarls. "They are all forbidden. No, not in the manner they are to all men, as you seem about to say. The Shah needn't keep his women from me with walls or veils, daroga, as you very well know. But why should you care? I've never seen you once look at a woman. Or speak of them. I thought better of you than to stoop to her morbid curiosity."

I raise my eyes then, but he isn't looking at me. He stares at the ceiling, his fingers playing idly with the tassels of a cushion. So I don't look away. In fact, my eyes seem riveted to the play of the gold strands twining about his bony hand.

"I'm sorry, Erik," I say quietly. "Forgive me. My thoughts were elsewhere. You are correct; I have no interest in harem life."

"Or women. Why don't you just say it?" I can almost see the smile beneath the mask when he speaks. "You always did love beautiful boys."

There is a pause, and in it I see a choice laid out before me. The culmination of my unscheduled visit. The springing, in fact, of the trap he set about me when I heard him sing in Nijni-Novgorod. A choice, because I have watched it encircle me slowly and have never moved.

"I always loved boys," I correct him. He still stares at the ceiling, but his body shifts in subtle invitation. Or so I read it. But perhaps I have written it there myself.

"What did you come here for, daroga?" His voice is a sigh, like singing, and it wrenches me forward so that I crouch over his stretched out legs, on all fours with one hand reaching out. It lands on his leg and I watch it as if it is someone else's as it slides up his thigh. He doesn't move away. I feel as though I have been the one imbibing, not he, and it is quite possible I am drunk on something else because I have never felt this way. Never wanted what I now know I do.

"Have you ever lain with a woman, Erik?" I ask stupidly, and I realize that I am really asking him for permission.

"If I had, I would not be assuaging my curiosity with you."

I ignore the jibe—it is an old game, and I grow weary. Besides, with my fingers poised about his flies, I cannot be certain about my own intent in asking. Desire, for me as a man, has always been expressed in the taking. And I know Erik will not give. I know, and do not care, and that's what's different about the fever that grips me now. I have his trousers undone and the only hint of movement is the slow rise and fall of his scant chest.

To my surprise he is erect, his flesh pale and mottled against the unrelieved black of the folded fabric. It jumps as I experimentally caress the foreskin, smoothing it back as his breath hitches almost silently and he holds his body still under my tentative ministrations.

It is not until I lower my mouth that he moves. His dead fingers twist in my hair as my lips wrap around his cock. It is hot, though the flesh of his thighs is perversely cool and dry under my clammy palms. I recall those long, bony hands dealing death without trembling, and the thought of them makes my own hardness jerk painfully in the western trousers I have adopted at court.

Would his hands be cool around me? I imagine them so, not warmed by the application of expensive oil—another gift from the Malekeh, perhaps—or my scorched flesh. They would twine almost casually about me, as if this is some new toy he will quickly tire of, once he learns its mechanism. Until then, however, his strong fingers would elicit exclamations which intrigue him enough to continue exploring...

I can imagine all this, my tongue carefully playing about the head of his shaft as my hand around it sets a rhythm of which Erik the composer would be proud (and to which Erik the man seems not to object), but I cannot imagine him acknowledging the encounter beyond the sighs I hear from him now. With the mask on, I cannot even see if his eyes are open or closed.

I cannot imagine him imagining me removing his shirt to reveal his thin chest, his too-oft-displayed body. Contrary to what one thinks when he is clothed, he is not a living skeleton, despite his painful thinness. He is devoid of fat, but ropey muscles betray his hideous strength. He is not one of the beautiful boys Persia has in such supply, and the court especially—not a smooth brown creature of limpid eyes and downy permissiveness. Had I once been such a boy?

Erik is nothing like me/them and everything about him fascinates me. Even his coldness. His utter stillness under me. His body betrays him in his hardness, in the flickering breaths he takes, but even his desire to keep himself aloof from me while my hot mouth surrounds his secret (and, I suspect, untouched) self drives me forward. I let one hand fall between his legs, which part minutely, so that my little finger might press gently against his anus. I am careful not to imply entrance, but his legs spasm along my body and I smile around his cock as I continue to slide up and down it, sucking lightly.

Lost in the rhythm, my fantasy moves beyond the bounds of the fragile state Erik has allowed here. In my mind, that little pot of oil (so generous, the royal family!) would be conveniently placed next to our little nest, as if Erik had been anticipating this visit and silently planned for its every eventuality. Wishing I had more hands, I would attempt to surreptitiously free myself from my own trousers, my cock aching with an eagerness I have never felt because my goal has never been so very elusive. In reality my timid finger does not move but its imagined counterpart would relieve its blunt pressure only to penetrate gently, wanting to make that impossibly long body tremble without denial at my impertinence. I would remove my hand—though not my lips—only to return slick and scented, and not with my smallest finger this time. My real lips and the hand that seeks only in my mind are gripped by the same fever that propelled me earlier; he _will _respond. He would not give any outward sign of permission, even in this fantasy of mine, but he does not fight me, and the way his body would bow as I ply him with two fingers (he is as tight here as everywhere else) only makes me harder as the rhythm of my mouth on him intensifies.

When I could wait no longer, when I am almost certain I need not, I would give him one last suckling kiss and surge over and into him gently; though my blood races, I must hold myself in check. I have placed a small pillow beneath him, and now my hands raise his sinewy legs slightly, playing over them as if every hard contour of him must be mapped. I am gentle, but as tightly as he surrounds me I am struck by the feeling we have done this before, and are merely stepping without missing a beat into a dance which we always save for each other. Or perhaps that is what I am meant to think, when the dance is in fact constricted by the grooves set before us. Both of us caught in one of Erik's own puppet-plays.

Without comment his hips rise to meet mine, his command over his body so ingrained he cannot relinquish it even in my mind's eye. I feel myself grow harder with every thrust, even as he does under my slick questing hands, as I caress him in time with my own movements. My fingers attempt to inscribe my truth on him which will, when read backwards, tell me his own. Still, he might as well be dead but for his warm quivering cock in my hands, the arching of his pelvis so slight as if to save room for doubt if questioned later. But he is not dead, not inside, and at last I see the sign I have been looking for: his head falls to the side and he sighs one long, shuddering, unlovely breath that marks my own release as well and I feel myself spending into him over and over as if we will be locked this way forever, myself chasing, he waiting--

And I am swallowing him, his head, yes, falling to the side but away from me, my trousers intact and my own passion unspent and urgent. I lick my lips and press my heated cheek to his cool thigh for a moment, stealing what time I can before he decides this never happened. All too soon his fingers untangle from my hair and his trousers are tugged insistently against my face so I must move it, attempting grace but rendered jointless by my prolonged desire and my sudden lack of purpose.

"It is not quite the same thing," I say at last, my tongue still tasting the evidence that some of it, at least, was not a dream, though the reality is fading quickly. When I finally risk a glance at him he is fully dressed, but I can finally discern those pale eyes on mine. I cannot hold his gaze, and I bend to uselessly rearrange the pillows and myself. When I look back up he is on his belly again, furiously scribbling at his manuscript.

"It is enough," he says. And for now, I suppose, it will have to be.


End file.
